TAP, TAP, TAPPING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR DANCER LEFT HER FOOTPRINTS ON CITY'S STAGE

By DAVID HINCKLEY CRITIC-AT-LARGE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|

Sep 21, 1997 | 12:00 AM

Three Saturdays ago, a few hours after the world had watched the memorial service for Princess Diana, 150 people gathered at St. Peter's Church in Manhattan to say goodbye to Harriet Browne. Harriet Browne moved in a smaller circle than Lady Di, but she moved through it with no less elegance and grace. She was a dancer, a tap dancer, and the pews of St. Peter's were lined with dancers and musicians whose stories about her came together on this: Harriet Browne always wore a smile. She danced at the Savannah Club, in the chorus line called the Savannah Peaches. She danced at Carnegie Hall. She toured with Cab Calloway. She danced with Gregory Hines, Bunny Briggs and Savion Glover. She started a dance school for children up where she lived, in the Bronx, because she figured that dancing could keep a kid off the street. Teaching was something she just did. "She paid a lot of attention to others," said tapper Jane Goldberg. "She cared a lot about how she taught and how you l earned.

" "She had a great gift," said St. Peter's pastor, Dale Lind. "And she did not let this gift just become a personal thing. She gave it to others.

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" In his invocation, Lind made note of the obvious: that this day was marked by an unusually intense sense of loss. "The angels are working overtime," he said, linking Diana, Mother Teresa and Browne as women who shared what they had. For everyday purposes, Browne represents the most realistic model in that group. Most of us cannot be a Diana, who had to sacrifice nothing to do her good works, and most of will not be a Mother Teresa, who chose to sacrifice everything. No, most people fall in the middle, working to carve out their own lives, taking care of daily business. Those who do that and also find time for others are not sanctified, perhaps, but they leave the world better than they found it. Renell Gonsalves, Browne's son, talked about how his mother once thought her dancing career was over. Rock 'n' roll had moved in, demand for tap dancers had dried up. "She was working in the housecleaning department at CBS," said Gonsalves. "She figured her dancing days were over. Then one day she saw some kids dancing, and she showed them a few things. "They told their teacher, Barbara Klein, who found my mother and offered her a job. After that, she went back into dancing herself. She always felt it gave her a second life.

" Dancing around the world She made the most of it, and by the time she finished she had traveled the world with her signature sand dance. Movie fans will remember Fred Astaire doing a sand dance for Ginger Rogers in "Top Hat," but few dancers did it on stage, preferring the percussion of taps to the gentler brushing of soles on sand. It was primarily associated with "Sandman" Sims who, after seeing Browne do it, realized she was so good that he asked her to stop. Whatever step she was doing, she had a loose elegance, honed from the time she was 3. She and her sister Marquita formed a child act in Chicago, the Jordan Sisters, continuing until Marquita got married and Harriet went solo. In recent years she formed the Aristaccato Tap Co. and danced with the Silver Belles, a company of one-time chorus-line dancers. Five Silver Belles danced to "Take the A Train" and later led the shim sham at Saturday's service, and considering the oldest Belle is 90, that's not a bad tribute to the power of dance. Hoofer to the end "They visit nursing homes and hospitals," says cultural historian Delilah Jackson. "All the faces light up.

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" Browne, who was 65 when she died, had been sick for a while. But she danced until last month, said Marquita who flew in from California on Labor Day to see her, only to find she had died early that morning. "Harriet loved dancing and people," said Marquita. "She sent everybody away s miling.

" So did her memorial service. Any day you hear Yvette Glover sing "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" is a richer day, and Mercedes Ellington, granddaughter of Duke Ellington, talked about how the real test for most people is whether they do what they can, while they can. "I feel Harriet is out there on the road with my father and grandfather," said Ellington. "I feel that if we follow in their footsteps, one day we will catch up with them.